When you're leveling though, typically you CAN tank with DPS gear (and in the case of Prot Paladins and of course Druids and Monks, your tank gear IS DPS gear). The problem is likely that newer tanks are taught bad play by impatient jackasses while leveling (just look at the "Why are people so impatient" thread and how many people are like "If the tank isn't pulling everything, he's bad. I can solo these dungeons so I pull for the tank to make it faster") so they don't know how to hold threat or use their abilities because they've been conditioned that DPS can pull and live, since that's what everyone does while leveling.

as a healer, youre not bloody kidding. more often than not if i do a RHC, it will be a wannabe tank in dps gear or worse, full pvp gear.
i leave groups if its the latter, it really is my pet hate seeing tanks in full pvp gear.

I fail to see how PvP gear is bad. This isn't (any previous expansion) where item budget was wasted on resilence. For a freshly dinged tank, pvp items are the best thing he can possibly use, except for fairly expensive crafts or world epics. They might not be optimal, but it's far superior to having someone tank in random quest greens.

Also, "dps gear" and "tanking gear" are quite often the same, as dodge/parry aren't very popular tanking stats anymore.

You just got the shit end of RNG today. Most people in LFG and Scenarios are bad.

The only time I've done "slow pulls" as a tank was on my DK alt from Death & Decay being on CD, as that generates a fair bit of threat over multiple targets - But sure, if people want to die i'll let them pull and if they were to do the same again I'd just explain to them what's up. It's also funny when they ask you to do big pulls so you get initial threat like body pull but don't hit them and they start nuking shit while you're running to get more mobs... GG.

At 90 I've out-DPS'd people on my Disc priest, and it only has like 470 ilevel.

As a tank you can probably solo most of the crap while leveling up without the dps or healer to support you, but it tends to go a little quicker that's all.

Kind of hard for me to tell at max level. My guilds tanks are great. When I do random LFR to valor cap, I generally have more health than the tanks, so I can keep them up with a bubble and Atonement, so I don't even pay attention to mistakes people make.

I have noticed that low level tanks in dungeons are generally very bad. Threat trouble, terrible awareness, and just obviously bad tanks in general.

Yes, many reasons why but I think mainly it's the simple fact people are used to being a dps spec and decide it's going to be just as easy to tank and won't bother to look into it beforehand to escape que times.

I have noticed that low level tanks in dungeons are generally very bad. Threat trouble, terrible awareness, and just obviously bad tanks in general.

Or maybe people just starting out their first tanks? Not everyone is born to tank, some people do need to practice.
You can't practice in low level dungeons while leveling ("boo slow tank u dont even need tank at this lvl!!"), you can't sure as hell practice in high level dungeons, you can't practice in heroics.... where CAN you practice then??
Maybe the proving grounds will help out a bit.

From healer/dps perspective... I don't see a big difference now or when lfd came out. Occasionally I get bad tanks, occasionally I get really good tanks, most of the time the tanks are okay, the run isn't 5 mins with chain pulling like it would be with a super good tank, but it's not bad and that's really... all there is to it.

Of course the 'quality' of tanks has dropped. The game shifted from stack stamina and hold aggro > to active mitigation, ie. you're in control of your survival yourself (to a certain extent). Lots of players either a) don't care, b) don't know any better and/or c) refuse to adapt to this change.

Are you seriously saying you need active mitigation in dungeons during leveling? Maybe if the healer doesn't do anything.

How can you, with a straight face, say tanking is harder now anyway. Because +300% threat for a tank was a nerf? Or every tank getting ridiculous AoE capabilities, longer range on taunt and being able to taunt bosses, no crushing blows, etc.?

Are you seriously saying you need active mitigation in dungeons during leveling? Maybe if the healer doesn't do anything.

How can you, with a straight face, say tanking is harder now anyway. Because +300% threat for a tank was a nerf? Or every tank getting ridiculous AoE capabilities, longer range on taunt and being able to taunt bosses, no crushing blows, etc.?

Crushing blow only existed until you reached def cap...
Always been able to taunt bosses except a few mechanic wise.
Like longer range on taunt added or removed skill depth, are you serious ? Are you gonna claim that with a straight face ?
Threat is a horrible boring mechanic and didnt exactly take skill to produce.

What levels are we talking about here? I agree at low levels most tanks don't exactly know what the role consists of. You also have to take into account that they might be brand new players to the game and aren't as knowledgeable as you on the topic.

I think over time the quality of tanks will decline simply due to the fact that tanking these days is nothing like what it used to be, now its just set it and forget it. I'm not saying I enjoyed having to make sure I had enough defense rating, but it did cause you to research tanking just a little bit before going into places.

I believe a large part of the reason is, everything up until normal raids is way to easy. Blizzard has made everything rush rush rush and has made groups of mobs die before a tank even gets hurt. The Ilvl scaling between dungeons and raids also makes it so healers in almost every heroic dungeon could carry a mage tank through if it weren't for aggro. Tanks don't have to use their defensive abilities ever, so they don't learn how to properly use them.

This is so true. I'm leveling a Paladin atm as my first tank. He's sitting at 76 right now, and I've leveled him primarily through dungeons. I've never once had to use a tank CD this whole time. Ardent Defender and Guardian of Kings just sit on my action bars untouched. I'm going to have to sit down with some of my guilds tanks when I hit 90 and talk through CD usage, because there's no mechanism in leveling a tank that aids you in learning their proper usage.

Other than that, leveling as a tank can be difficult even if you are a good tank. If I'm in the middle of a group of mobs, and don't have my AoE abilities off CD when a DPS pulls another group, it can be a pain to round them all up. I'm all for pulling multiple groups as long as the healer can handle it, but let me do the pulling for christ's sake so it goes smoothly. Yesterday in a DTK, a Lock kept pulling mobs on me, so eventually I just let him tank them. If he wants to pull, then he can tank, not my problem.

I feel like tanking is so much easier than DPS, but at the same time you come under a lot more (often times unwarranted) critique from every horrible player you come across while playing a tank. I found myself up in verbal fisticuffs with bads 9:10 times I queue'd for a 5 man as a tank.

I dont think the quality is declining, I think the quality tanks dont want to que with randoms anymore - and I dont blame them.

I refuse to que as tank to do LFR anymore. I would rather que as DPS, go and mine for 35-45 minutes while i wait and DPS it - carefree.

That way I dont have to put up with DPS who refuse to look at threat on the pull or during taunts. I dont have to put up with healers who are actually DPS. In dunegeons I dont have to put up with DPS who constanlty pull shit for me when I can see the healer is in blues still and cant handle me pulling the entire instance at once. I dont have to cop the blame for everything that goes wrong and I dont have to put up with idiot off tanks who taunt absolutely everything and dont know what tank swap means.

Dungeons, well every class that can tank or heal picks that spot for a quicker que, its not something new. Hell, if I could pick tank on my Enh Shammy while dungeoning I would (because I usually end up tanking most of it anyway) and thats where I think a lot of the problem lies there.

I love tanking, I love doing it as a change of pace from DPSing on my Shaman all week. But I refuse to que with randoms anymore and I know a lot of the quality tanks, the ones who know what to do, are beginning to do as well.

The problem is that LFR is too forgiving. I don't know how Blizzard can fix it, because they want to have a Really Easy Mode available for folks who truly need it -- the problem comes in when players simply 'want it' and feel LFR is a quick route to Valor. "Just get it over with" becomes the mindset, and you then have DPSers who pull for the tank, Healers who are halfway-attentive (at best), etc, etc.

I know that there are plenty of folks out there who need LFR to see the raiding content, and they are thankful for it, and they play as best they can when in a group... and then there are the slack-offs who ruin (or risk ruining) the experience for everyone else.

i think u got it the other way around the difficulty has gone down if anything its practically impossible to lose aggro now days and the rotations are just as faceroll as they ever were

No. Survival is 100% harder now. Tanking has gone from complete faceroll-dont-stand-in-shit-and-live to now actually using the correct abilities and the correct time. It is still the easiest role in the game but nowhere near as faceroll as it was in the past.

Threat is not a tanking mechanic anymore. It hasn't been one since BC so IDK why you are even using that as an example. If someone doesnt pull off me in the first GCD then they wont pull off me the rest of the fight. With the addition of plus threat when taunting, they are making threat between 2 tanks not hard anymore either. It is clear Blizz does not want threat to be a hard mechanic and that has been there stance since BC.

Tanking is all about active mitigation now. If you dont know how to play your class in heroic raids, or even normal at low ilvls, then you stand almost no chance of being successful. A decent geared tank can go through a whole dungeon without even using their mitigation.

as a healer, youre not bloody kidding. more often than not if i do a RHC, it will be a wannabe tank in dps gear or worse, full pvp gear.
i leave groups if its the latter, it really is my pet hate seeing tanks in full pvp gear.

That is funny considering when the expansion first came out, pvers were doing arena to conquest cap for the epics that were better than random heroic gear. The honor gear was even nerfed because people were doing bgs for the honor gear that was better than the heroic dungeon gear. Any halfway decent tank should not have issues tanking faceroll heroic dungeons in full pvp gear, even the 458 crafted gear.